I tested the initial Pyrocat HD 2-bath technique on a few rolls of exposed Kodak Tri-X I had already shot with. The results were quite interesting and definitely wetted my appetite to continue testing it…

Did you know board game photography was a thing…I may have invented it. My brother and I have been strategy and war-game board game players for years. It’s an intellectually enriching hobby and one that’s fed my curiosity of the world. They create a magnificent space in which to test ideas of history, strategy, decisions and outcomes. These games are designed by some of the brightest people I’ve ever met.

I’ve been using the same BW film and developer combination for 14 years; Kodak T-max 100 developed in Kodak X-tol 1:1 dilution. It’s what I tested when I was in school and it was tested for printing onto Ilford Multigrade IV darkroom paper.

One of the more intense school assignments was a project called Black Glass. The project last a month, if I remember correctly, and it taught how to light and photograph reflections. Each image had to be shot on 4x5 Polaroid negative film before being shot on black and white and chrome film. Photographing a reflective surface is quite possibly the hardest thing in product photography for it ‘sees’ everything on set, including at times the photographer and camera

Art is our universal language. It has no cultural boundary for it is the fingerprint of our shared humanity. It is a shared gift we all posses. We have long forgotten the struggles of the upper paleolithic peoples of Southern Europe; their societal, political or environmental hardships, but their art lives into the twenty first century…

I challenge you to build a pinhole camera out of cardboard. Here’s a link to how to do it. I guarantee the process will make you look at photography in a different light and you’ll be more attached to the results than any of the iPhone images you took this week.

Photography is the bratty little sibling of the art family. One of the only art mediums invented and driven by market forces rather than artistic drive. First portraiture, later snap-shots. Revolutionaries like Brady, Adams,Ray, Stieglitz, working on the fringes of both the photographic and art worlds developed it beyond that and into a means of deep expression.